OK! I Surrender

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At the age of 63 and a life long non-smoker, I have finally given in to the welter of government and health pressure group hectoring and I have finally taken up smoking.

 

The build up has been a long time coming with many stages, but the final straw came tonight with the local news saying that the local authority in Cumbria was going to ban smoking in public parks.

 

Let’s face it, Cumbria isn’t anything other than a public park is it? A county that depends entirely on tourism wants to tell visitors that they cannot have a fag in the big open spaces of the lake district. Brilliant. Of course it is all dressed up as a campaign to make it socially unacceptable to smoke in the presence of children, but the objective is abundantly clear. The aim is to stop anybody smoking anywhere.

 

Prohibition of alcohol failed catastrophically in the United States. When alcohol was prohibited in 1919 it immediately resulted in illegal brewing and distilling being taken over by organised crime and the law had to be abandoned in 1933. The crime syndicates born out of the ban on alcohol did not die with abandonment of prohibition, they just moved on to protection, prostitution and drugs.

 

The hair shirt fanatics in the UK have learned lessons from history. Instead of trying to get an absolute ban in a single law they have sought to make smoking and drinking gradually more expensive and difficult over a period of time. This has now got to the position where we are being told that we cannot smoke in the open air of the wide open spaces of the lakes and fells.

 

Never being a person to do anything by halves, on hearing the news of the proposed new smoking restriction I set out for the nearest tobacco retailer and bought a pack of cigars. Knowing nothing about them I bought the largest and most expensive ones on the basis that they would be most likely to be particularly offensive to the antis.

 

Such has been my dislike of smoking that in my student years I used to take my cannabis in cakes or by chewing resin rather than puffing on a joint. Well, I am a lot older now and I have sucked on a few spliffs in the intervening years so I thought it would be OK to join the dwindling ranks of the smokers.

 

I settled in to the front terrace of a nice wine bar with a large glass of red, assured myself that the ash trays were an indicator that smoking was permissible and guiltily lit up. It is utterly absurd for a man in his 60′s, but I felt really naughty lighting up this cigar in a public place. I think that my wife was rather pleased that I was showing some signs of being a normal human being, but I am not sure that she is the best person to judge.

 

Anyway, I rather enjoyed it. I am now going to sample some different brands and take my new habit to other parts of town. I may even go to Stony Stratford to ostentatiously smoke in their streets. I doubt whether I will ever take cigar use to the levels enjoyed by Bill Clinton, but thanks to the nanny state I am looking forward to a new area of enjoyment in my retirement.

Related articles

• Councils seek to use new powers to ban smoking in public parks (bigbrotherwatch.org.uk)
• Britain to ban smoking in public parks (news.bioscholar.com)
• Stand up to the Stony Stratford smoking ban (bigbrotherwatch.org.uk)

Liquor, Lies and Lethal Illness

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Over 20 years ago the Royal College of Physicians set what it called safe limits for the consumption of alcohol. Since then the government has continuously pumped out the message that it is dangerous for men to drink more than 21 units and women 14 units each week. Ten years after this campaign started Dr Richard Smith said drinking guidelines were plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence it was “more of an intelligent guess.”

This made no difference whatever to the persistent, and expensive, nagging to stay within the limits or your health could be seriously damaged. Now MP‘s have decided that it is their turn to decide how much alcohol we ought to drink. The House of Commons Science & Technology Committee will be comparing UK guidance with that in other countries and examining the evidence base of these guidelines. What is the betting that the evidence used elsewhere for their propaganda campaigns is just the same as Dr Smith has told us was used in Britain.

When the MP’s, who do not have the medical or scientific knowledge to do what they say they are going to do, they will make recommendations to the chief medical officers. When they have made this new guess about what drinking levels to preach at us our Parliamentarians will “look at official attempts to educate the public about alcohol abuse.”

That could be a good idea. In the 20 years since the Department of Health has been throwing our taxes at pestering people to drink less, alcohol related deaths have doubled. This should be an extremely good lesson that this public ‘education’ is worse than useless.

People will always want to use alcohol because they have done so since the earliest information we have about humans. What is most likely to result in people drinking more than is good for them is that they are not content with their lives. Some causes of discontent are having less money than you would like because of high taxes; being bullied by a hectoring government into doing things differently than you would choose; being lied to by authority figures who claim knowledge of things that they do not know; and having a government wastes the money of its citizens instead of creating the conditions for them to be better off.

We know that booze has risks, now shut up and leave us to decide when we fancy a drink.

Who Will Inherit The Dog?

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Sierra Sciences (SS) in Nevada claim to have identified a range of substances that can induce adult cells to produce telomerase. This is very important because the shortening of telomeres is believed to be a major cause of ageing and telomerase can stop that shortening or even lengthen the telomeres.

 

Eternal life isn’t available at the chemist yet, but Bill Andrews of SS is confident that he is on to something good. The problem is that it will be many years before there is any chance of getting medical approval for trials with humans, but Bill is not going to be put off. You can sell stuff as pet food which is not considered fit for human consumption and he sees a massive market in life extending dog food.

 

I am sure that Bill is right, but I| am not convinced that his only consumers will be the pampered pooches of doting owners. Those fearing their dotage will likely be tucking in their napkins and dipping in at the dog bowl.

 

Look out for the SS range of gourmet doggy burgers and chili con canine at your you local supermarket soon. The Queen had better stock up on 100th Birthday cards.

Related articles

• What Will Our Telomeres Tell Us? (discovermagazine.com)

Coastguard Confusion

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We have just been through a ritual process of the government announcing spending reductions in an emergency service, a series of howls from vested interests that public safety will be put at risk and then a Commons committee hears ‘evidence’ from those same interests before recommending a reduction in the savings.

 

Is this really a sensible way to identify need and to see that this need is met as efficiently and effectively as possible? Clearly not.

 

I wonder how many people actually know what the Coastguard does and how it is organised. Well it is responsible for search and rescue offshore. It has no involvement in customs enforcement or any other seafaring matters. Most people will know that lifeboats are run by the RNLI which is not a part of government, but a separate charity which operates with volunteer crews.

 

The Coastguard is a part of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) which is a form of QUANGO attached to the Department of Transport. Apart from search and rescue the MCA deals with matters of maritime law. There might be some sort of logic to link shipping law with a transport department, but it makes no sense at all to tie up the emergency function of search and rescue to this bureaucracy.

 

If offshore search and rescue has any natural relationships at all it is with the Fire & Rescue Service, the RNLI and the host of volunteer mountain, moorland and other rescue organisations.

 

Instead of going through ridiculous processes of trying to rearrange the Coastguard as a semi-detached government department the state should get out of this altogether.

 

What needs to be done is for the countries and regions of the UK to make their own decisions about the standards of service they expect from an off shore rescue service and then for them to make their own arrangements to provide such a service. In some places it might be the best option to combine what is now being done by the coastguard with the local lifeboat service. In others ther may be a volunteer search and rescue organisation that has seafaring skills and wishes to take on an extension of role into offshore search and rescue. Some Fire and Rescue services already have inshore rescue responsibilities and may be well placed to incorporate the Coastguard role into their operational range.

 

It is also possible that some authorities might want to invite tenders from private companies, community groups or charities.

 

Whichever solution is adopted they will still be able to lease the types of helicopter and other support that the Coastguard does now and which would not be appropriate to be locally owned.

 

Let us be clear, the requirements for the Thames estuary have very little relationship to those around the western isles of Scotland. The Scilly‘s have different needs the north Cornish coast. None of us has any need for a government bureaucracy working hardest to preserve its own jobs and power.

 

The message for Cameron must be to do what he said he would do in the election and return responsibility to local levels to organise their own communities in their own best interests.

Where The Spirit Takes Them

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After the dreadful blast in Lincolnshire in which five men lost their lives, we can expect lots of outrage about illegal immigrants, illegal alcohol production, tax evasion, poisonous drinks and much more.

 

One thing that we will not hear anything about is that if you pay twenty quid for a bottle of vodka, about £13.50p of that price is tax. For the manufacture, wholesaling, distribution and retailing of your vodka you have paid £6.50p. That includes all the raw materials, labour, diesel and everybody’s profits. For doing precisely nothing, the government has taken twice as much as the people who were responsible for getting your vodka to you.

 

This is not enough for the anti-drinking lobby. They are lobbying to have minimum prices fixed for booze so that you will have to pay even more for every unit of alcohol that you buy. This is despite the fact that Britain has higher alcohol taxes than most countries.

 

You all know the supposed justification. Excessive drinking is damaging to health and ‘binge’ drinkers are responsible for crime and disorder. Advocates of minimum pricing claim that 3,000 lives each year could be saved if a minimum price of 50 pence per unit were imposed.

 

In my view the people who are trying to tell us how to live our lives are talking complete rubbish as usual. First of all, the people whose lives are substantially shortened by their alcohol consumption are generally very heavy drinkers. This is not a case of going a bit over nanny’s guidelines, but those who consume high alcohol volume drinks for most of their waking time. A significant proportion of these people have actually made a decision to end their lives with the help of alcohol or they suffer from a serious medical condition (not alcoholism, which may be an aspect of personality but it is not a disease) which makes it very difficult or impossible for them to manage their alcohol use. It should be self evident that pricing will have very little effect on these drinkers although it may mean that they are more likely to engage in crime to be able to maintain their alcohol intake.

 

The other effect of excessive taxation of alcohol is that the production or import of untaxed products will increase. This will in turn have several effects. The two most significant ones are that low grade drinks will cause very much more serious health damage than those retailed through reputable outlets and so far as price is significant at all, those who buy the very cheap, untaxed products will be able to drink more. When covert distilling goes wrong, which it is bound to do because of the inadequate skills and materials of those doing it, the health consequences are terrible. Blindness, paralysis and death are outcomes which can occur from a single drinking bout with contaminated products.

 

As we have seen at the industrial unit in Boston, when the state makes it worthwhile to create a black market in distilling there can be other tragic consequences too.

Related articles

• Illegal alcohol clue to death blast (mirror.co.uk)
• Five killed after explosion at suspected illegal vodka factory in Lincolnshire (mirror.co.uk)

Public Services Policy – Postcode Precision

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Cameron said it was about “ending the old big-government, top-down way of running public services, releasing the grip of state control and putting power in people’s hands. The old dogma that said Whitehall knows best – it’s gone,” he said. “There will be more freedom, more choice and more local control.” Replacing a “take what you are given” culture in public services with a “get what you choose” ethos was vital to making the UK a fairer and more competitive country.

 

These are brilliant words Dave. If only you meant it or, probably more accurately, had the balls to go through with it.

 

 

The key elements of the plan are:

 

“Companies, charities and community groups to bid to run everything from local health services to schools, libraries and parks.”

 

About bloody time. What sort of democracy is it in which you have a choice about what loaf of bread or pair of socks you can buy, but if you need your hip replaced or your child needs educating you must take whatever uncaring, incompetent or dangerous provision there is in your catchment unless you are rich enough to pay twice?

 

“Citizens to be given new legally-enforceable “right to choose” services.”

 

Stuff your legal rights Cameron. We don’t need new laws, more bureaucrats and the happy hunting ground that this will produce for all sorts of parasites. What is required is for state monopolies to be ended. Providers of every kind must be able to offer their services in a free market so that those who best meet the needs of individuals and communities will thrive.

 

“State to have to justify retaining monopoly service in most areas.”

 

The state exists only to ensure the safety of citizens from crime and external threat. The state has no entitlement to hold a monopoly of services of any kind outside of the military and criminal justice system. In fact there is no reason at all for the government to be taking taxes from people for those things which they could buy or take out insurance.

 

“Councils to be given new funding streams.”

 

The main reason that Councils fail so badly to meet the needs of the communities that they are meant to serve is that most of their money comes from central government and almost all of what they do is dictated from Westminster. To be serious about localism, Cameron and his government need to recognise that genuine decision making must be made at a community level. For years, all governments have been in fear of the media accusation of postcode lotteries in relation to health and other services. This absurdity must be confronted. Instead of the one size fits all demand which has resulted in crazy targets, we need the precision with which markets can meet the specific needs of local areas with tailored products.

 

Instead of new funding streams being extracted from taxpayers and distributed from Westminster, high quality services need local providers who know their consumers and work on a human scale. Cameron is offering ever more control when what is needed is much greater devolution of power and real autonomy for the towns and villages in which we actually live.

 

“Providers to be able to make profits in some areas like getting people off benefits and into work, but not in others such as health care.”

 

Why on earth is it OK to make a profit out of getting somebody off benefit, but not to fix their varicose veins? This stupid statement just panders to the belief that has been built over generations that there is something distasteful about running a commercial organisation. The opposite is the truth. When people are motivated by the sensible need to make a living, they really care about providing such a good service that their organisation will grow and they will be secure in their livelihood.

 

What we get from public sector organisations is a focus on building empires and meeting the demands of out of touch managers and politicians. The ordinary citizen who is forced to use these state operated organisations must put up with whatever is provided. All too often that is remote, uncaring, dirty and even dangerous.

 

There is a simple message for the Prime Minister. You have uttered all the right words and promised none of the necessary actions. Having been elected on a programme of localism you have a responsibility to deliver it.

Related articles

• You: David Cameron promises to ‘end state’s monopoly’ over public services (guardian.co.uk)
• David Cameron: public services to be opened up to competition (telegraph.co.uk)
• PM: Changes will end state monopoly (mirror.co.uk)
• Competition plan for state services unveiled (independent.co.uk)

Zit

The zit on my cheek

is driving me mad.

It’s itching

and oozing puss.

I rip off

the scab

and it stings

like fuck.

Then drips blood

into my beer.

The reason

it came there

is a hair

growing in.

It happens when

you’re getting old

and cells forget

their job.

That bloody hair

reminds me

of my brown

and blotchy skin.

What was stiff

has now gone floppy.

Supple joints

are gnarled and tight.

The oozing zit

is evidence

of life

approaching night.

Smoking, advertising and health

The Government continues to rant on about requiring tobacco products to be in completely plain packs and for them to be hidden under the counter. Apart from this making cigarettes more enticing for kids and increasing the ease with which criminals can sell smuggled rubbish on street corners, anti-smoking laws are more widely damaging.
The constant preaching and tax wasting campaigns from the government and an army of interferers who insist on trying to tell us how to lead my lives will not work. The number of people who smoke has reduced from the time when the state made free issues to the military and it was almost abnormal to be a non-smoker. That is a good thing, but it is not the result of stupid laws and wasted taxes. Society develops, we get more information about health, we become aware of causing others discomfort and that changes behaviour in all sorts of ways. Most of the laws follow changing trends rather than cause them.
Social activity has suffered seriously as a result of the smoking ban and the truth is that mental health problems are a greater source of human misery in the modern world than the physical ailments caused by smoking.
Nicotine is an anti-anxiety drug which people fund themselves and it is no more addictive than the tax funded diazepam that often replaces it. As a catalyst to social communication and friendship building smoking actually reduces the scourge of loneliness and isolation that is being aggravated by pub closures.
All of the stuff we are told about NHS costs caused by smoking are nonsense. Poor mental health is an enormous burden on society as well as individuals, and smoking is one part of keeping that type of ill health in check. Cruel though it sounds, it is also true that the highest whole life health costs come from people living to a great age. If they die a little younger (and possibly happier) because they smoked, the costs to the health service will be lower overall rather than higher.
Let us have an end to preaching, lies and excessive intrusion into private choice. Pubs, restaurants and workplaces should make their own decisions whether or not they want smokers or if they want to designate special places. As a non-smoker I will make my own judgements about where and with whom I want to eat and drink. This is not a proper decision for government.The prohibition of alcohol in the USA in early 20th century did nothing to reduce alcohol misuse. It increased the number of people killed and maimed by illegal distilling and it created an enormous organised crime network that has never been defeated. As our government moves blindly towasrds tobacco prohibition, the same types of side effect will grow.
The government is a bigger threat to a safe and healthy future than free individuals making their own choices and all of us expecting to be treated with dignity, courtesy and respect.

NICE is Nasty

 

NICE is a bloated quango which interferes in which medicines we may or may not be permitted to use. Apart from providing excessive incomes and gold plated pensions to its over sized staff, the purpose of this body was supposed to improve health care by regulating the introduction of new treatments and ending a ‘postcode lottery’ of availability. For those who may not know, quango means quasi-autonomous non-government organisation. That in turn means a mysteriously appointed, completely unaccountable bunch of politicians cronies who interfere in the lives of everybody.

 

What is often attacked and derided as a ‘postcode lottery’ is actually the healthy variation that results from local services being provided appropriately to meet local needs. Crofters in the Hebrides do not have the same health issues or requirements as coke snorting, champagne swillers in Knightsbridge. While ordinary people can recognise that, the nanny loving broadcast media and their mates in government cannot.

 

It is now reported that a sub committee this nasty NICE bureaucracy has done some work at the request of the Department of Health (HaHa – Department of Sickness Management and Drug Administration wouldn’t have quite the same ring would it?) and come up with the recommendation that Council staff and Health & Safety inspectors should be given the right to enter every parent’s home to check if you have stair gates, hot water temperature restrictors, window locks and a whole load of other stuff. Many of these things could be useful and sensible, but all of them are things to be decided by adults dealing with the needs and priorities of their lives. We all know what the result of the snooping would be. Apart from the terrible invasion of privacy, branding people with different approaches to the bureaucrats as child harming criminals and the further infantilisation of every citizen there would be prosecution of poor parents so that their difficult lives would be made impossible. The next thing would be to take some of these children into institutional care where they would be exposed to abuse and condemned to a future in which they would have a far greater likelihood of becoming criminals or abusers in adult life.

 

If all this was not bad enough, NICE also recommends a new government database to allow GPs, midwives and other officials visiting homes to log health and safety concerns they spot. These people would be asked to provide home safety advice and where necessary conduct a home risk assessment.

 

“If possible they should supply and install home safety equipment”

 

This revolting, Orwellian garbage has been put out to consultation with the intention of introducing it next year. We must tell the government clearly and quickly to scrap this stupid idea now. My own children are long grown up, but if any of these busybodies want to come and check on my grandchildren or great grandchildren in my home I can only suggest that they preserve their own safety by not exposing themselves to the risks they would face by coming here.

 

Doctors, midwives, etc. are well regarded for their professional skills and services. I wonder how people would feel about them if they are turned into Stasi style state snoopers?

Licence to Buy Cigarettes

I have been struck today by the latest idiot ramblings of a useless, publicly financed quango. Professor Julian Le Grand, Chairman of Health England, has proposed that people should be required to buy an annual licence before they would be able to buy cigarettes. To get the licence you would have to pay £10, provide a photograph, proof of age and get your application endorsed by a doctor who would have to certify that your health would not be at ‘massive risk’ from smoking.

Requiring doctors to play a part in policing the purchase of cigarettes is a misuse of medical professionals and a shocking waste of necessary resources.

Le Grand talks about the money raised going to the NHS although it would be obvious to anybody other than a complete cretin that this scheme would cost far more to administer than it could ever earn from the £10 annual fee. No doubt that would be an excuse for future massive increases in the licence fee once they had conned legislators in to introducing the scheme.

I don’t smoke and never have done, but if I hear any more crap from this nannying government about smoking I might well start.

Le Grand describes his stupid idea as ‘Libertarian Paternalism’. I have never heard of that before, but I can tell you Julian that you are not my father and your theft of the word libertarian in the name of control is grossly offensive. You can stuff your offensive bureaucratic idea. You should also wind up your useless organisation and stop wasting my money. My health is none of your business. Keep your nose out of it.